Lickbum's Quandary
by Miraculous5
Summary: Caprice Henrich Lickbum III had many problems. One of them was the matrix. ~*Please read! Thanks!*~ Rated for language and shockingly apparent innuendo
1. Meet The Geek

Hey everyone, thanks for reading my story. Although you'd have to be pretty close to being a complete idiot to think that I owned The Matrix, I'll still tell you here that I don't. I'll write more of this story (maybe) if people review it. What's the point of writing something nobody reads, after all. So thanks a lot, and do try and enjoy....  
  
Lickbum's Quandary  
  
Caprice Henrich Lickbum III had many problems. The foremost, and often most painful, of these was that he kept getting beaten up. He didn't know why people liked to single him out and then commence ravage him; maybe it was because his first name sounded like a girl's or maybe it was that his last name was Lickbum. Lickbum, for Christ's sake. He'd found out very soon in life (but not soon enough, it would seem) that with a last name like Lickbum, you didn't last very long anywhere - especially if that anywhere included public schools.   
Some of the other guys with promiscuous names had adopted nicknames and were only really shamed when an ignorant substitute called out their humiliation in full. Some of them had made a joke of their names and got known for their sense of humor, some of them had become good in macho things like sports and so made up for their shortcomings. But Caprice had ignored the problem completely and, in doing so, had made it ever so much worse.  
But even if he hadn't had a funny name, Caprice would definitely have still been beat up. He was a geek. Not just any geek but The Geek as far as any of his classmates were concerned. Not only could he recall the names and species of the entire Star Trek cast, but he also had a vast collection of black socks, reeked of bad hygiene, and was skilled with computers. Quite skilled, actually, which would explain why he had picked the lock to the school computer lab at 12:03 Wednesday morning. He wasn't planning to steal one, he told the principal at a later date, he just sort of wound up needing it.  
Okay, the reason Caprice liked to use the school computers is that they couldn't be traced directly to him. And for the kind of hacking he was doing on them, it was a very good quality, indeed. But at 12:03 on Wednesday morning, Caprice wasn't hacking into a government mainframe or changing his grades - he was tracing a rumor. It had been a rumor that was less than a rumor, really. A whisper overheard by chance, an idea which glinted and darted but was never really heard or seen. It wasn't a rumor because it wasn't something you spoke of, lest it disappear on the tip of your tongue and it wasn't a rumor because every time you got a hint of what was going on, the whispers would stop and the scent would fade. It wasn't a rumor, it was a murmur, but it was like the creaking of a mountain before an avalanche - something so small as a result of something so big it was hidden. And that avalanche was The Matrix.  
"The Matrix." said a voice behind Caprice. In the movies, he would have spun around in his chair coolly (and he would have had a spinning chair instead of just a cheap school one) or arranged his face into an Oscar-winning inquisitive look. But this wasn't the movies, this was a dorky little boy who smelled like overcooked broccoli hacking into things that weren't meant for his eyes which breaking into his school and trespassing on state property.   
"Eep!" squeaked Caprice dived under the desk. While Caprice Lickbum was a very smart person, diving under his desk wasn't a very smart thing to do. The desk had obviously not been designed for diving and he managed to injury his head, cut his leg, kick over his chair, and become entangled with so many wires that the computer toppled off of the desk and hit the for with a satisfyingly gut-wrenching crash. Plus it was dark down there and Caprice couldn't see his assailant, not that he'd be any less scared if he could.  
He waited there, shivering in the cold and enveloping darkness for quite some time until he realized that there was nobody else in the room. This led him to make two conclusions: either there had never been another individual there with him and the voice had been totally imagined, in which case he really needed to stop being paranoid, or that the other person was still there and was just a really quiet breather. Or maybe they were deviously holding their breath, just waiting for him to become less suspicious, come out from underneath the table, and commence to get his head blown off. That's what usually happened. Caprice knew because it occurred in about every action flick ever created, and he wasn't about to fall for it.  
There wasn't really another choice, however, because his legs were getting cramped and it was a little hard to breathe under the miniscule desk. Maybe he could take his assassin by surprise.   
"AAA!" he screamed, leaping awkwardly out from under the desk and holding his hands in the approved Jackie Chan kung-fu stance. But no one was there. The eerie glow from the streetlight outside turned the darkness of the computer room into a series of shadows, but no one could be seen. What could be seen, however, was a very smashed, school-owned computer.   
"Oh, man..." he said, knowing it was bad, because now he was talking to himself, "Right, now if I can manage to get it home somehow, I can hide it in my closet until I can fix it. Or buy it." This plan sounded optimistic enough, until he stared down and viewed the extent of the damage. The monitor looked like it had been simultaneously involved in a nuclear blast and trampled by enraged zoo elephants.  
He hoisted the wreckage back onto the desk and surveyed it.  
"I am so fucked?" he asked of no one. Oddly enough, the computer seemed to be working despite it's recent mauling. To the left of the screen, in small white letters, read: "You are so fucked." Just like that. It was rather rude, Caprice thought. First mysterious voices, and now his computer was swearing at him. The computer was right, though.  
"Yes," he said, a little bemused, "I suppose I am."   
The cursor blinked sullenly for a second, then spelled out. "So am I."   
"Well, I should think so, I did drop you on the floor for a second, there. I'm surprised you're still working, to tell you the half of it."  
"Not the computer, you idiot. Me."Caprice nodded like he understood completely.  
"Ah," he said meaningfully, meaning nothing at all.  
"What you find is what you seek," the computer blinked dully, "Follow the orange armadillo." The screen flickered and died with a lonesome "Bloop." and Caprice arched a bewildered eyebrow.  
"Right. If anyone cares to know, I am officially insane," he said to himself. He searched around the room looking for a broom for a while until his cell phone rang urgently from his back pocket. Caprice thought about not answering it, just in case it was his dad realizing that his son wasn't in bed. But something made him answer it and so he picked up cautiously.  
"Hello?"  
"There's a broom in the closet to your left." It was the same voice that had frightened him before, but now it seemed as if he had almost expected hearing it.  
"Oh, right. Thanks."  
"Hurry up already, will ya? This leather is really chafing me."  
"What?" said Caprice, back to being confused. But the person on the other end had already hung up. Caprice was once again shocked at the rudeness of the world.  
He turned to his right, got the broom out of the closet, and swept up the broken monitor glass on the floor. There were still some bits and pieces, but he really was trying to hurry, so Caprice picked up the monitor with some effort (watching Star Trek doesn't really tone the muscles) and hurried out the door and into the night.   
  



	2. Revenge of the Giant Robotic Spiders

Hey everyone, thanks for reading my story

CHAPTER TWO: REVENGE OF THE GIANT ROBOTIC SPIDERS

Caprice ran more awkwardly than usual because the monitor was quite heavy, but no one was out to see him this late at night, so he ran faster and without self consciousness. He ran so fast, in fact, that he almost missed noticing the big-rig truck parked at the intersection. He waddled (which can be the only appropriate term for the infamous "geek walk") quickly past, scanning the words on the side of the truck, then waddled even more quickly back. On the side of the truck, there was a picture of a neon orange armadillo and, written in large block letters, the words "Orange Armadillo Delivery Service – Find what you're looking for". Caprice blinked and stared at it again.

"Huh," he breathed, "Well I guess they're not really into the subtle approach." He knew what he should do. He should be running up behind the truck, sliding open the back door, slipping inside and doing it all without being noticed by the driver. But when you're 20 pounds overweight; so out of shape you can't touch your toes; carrying a large, broken monitor which will probably get you expelled from school; and have been having a really bad night, to put it lightly, you don't really feel like dashing across an intersection and performing heroics better suited for someone wearing black leather.

So he started shambling half-heartedly across the road towards the truck, and then he started shambling a little faster. And quite soon, he found to his surprise, that he was running faster than he ever had in his life. He jumped when he reached the truck and in one fluid movement which can only be described as a kickboxing pirouette, Caprice knocked the lock off the metal door on the back of the truck, pulled the door open with his foot, managed to roll perfectly along the floor so as not to injure himself, and spring back up again with his hands in fighting stance. He felt a great urge to mutter a wonderfully cynical one-liner and would have, too, if the truck hadn't started up. The force of the acceleration knocked him over and ruined the moment.

"Damn it," he said to himself, instead, "I was almost feeling cool there, too." Since the spell of the moment was officially broken, Caprice finally looked around at his surroundings. He was in an even more complete darkness than he had been under the desk and now the computer wasn't even working to give him hints. Suddenly something flared towards the front of the truck and Caprice realized it was a fire… probably a match. He was right, but for some reason, the match was lighting much more than it should have and soon the whole back of the truck was illuminated quite well. But Caprice only noticing one thing now: there was a really hot chick in here with him, and she was looking at him. At _him_. And she looked _interested! _That, obviously, was a first for The Geek.

"Hi," he said, not knowing what else to say and figuring "hi" was right for any occasion. Well not any occasion, hypothetically, you could be locked in you closet with a mob of rabid ferrets in which case hi wouldn't do you much – 

"Hello Sexmachine0441," said the amazingly hot chick. Sexmachine0441 was Caprice's hacker name (some people had chosen something snappy like Neo or Tank, but Caprice had decided to stick with the basics) and he felt unbelievably stupid having it revealed that he was quite obviously not a sex machine. Or any sort of machine, unless it was one that could down a whole bag of Fritos in half an hour. 

"You can call me Caprice. Caprice Henrich Lickbum III, that's my name," Caprice Henrich Lickbum III said and immediately felt infinitely stupider – no wonder he had so many problems, he was always creating new ones for himself.

"I know," said the woman smoothly. Smoothly, thought the Sexmachine0441, that's a good word for her. She was the epitome of smooth. She gazed at him with a cool, smooth stare. She had on smooth black leather. Even her hair looked freshly oiled and smoothed.

"My name is Trinity," said Trinity with little emotion, "and I have a problem." Caprice squinted in recognition of this statement. But it was usually himself who was saying it.

"Really? Me too!" staring off well, he thought, let's see if I can hold it, "I mean I have problems, not that…uh.. my name is Trinity. My name is Caprice, you know. You do know! You just told me that! Heh heh…" he laughed nervously and wished he was dead. Trinity just leveled her stare and looked at him in what he took to be disgust.

"So…" he tried again, "what seems to be the problem?" Trinity glanced down at the floor and then back up at him.

"You, Caprice." Caprice grinned with pure delight, but then realized it was inappropriate and tried to hide it. He was her problem. That meant this incredibly hot chick had definitely been thinking about him (maybe in a bad way, but that doesn't matter. It's the thought that counts.)… maybe she had even been watching him. Maybe with all that thinking and watching she had developed some sort of obsessive crush and would at any moment throw herself on him in an uncontrollable fit of lust. But probably not.

"Me?" he managed to ask, between fantasies, "What have I done?" Trinity bit her lip for a second and seemed to be thinking.

"Well," she said, "You've been poking around, for God sakes! Will you please stop? Please?! It's hard enough having to hide our presence from the agents without some little idiot high schooler hacking into our mainframe every thirty minutes!" By this time her fists were clenched, her eyes were strained, and she was in full tirade mode. Caprice hadn't noticed.

"Agents? You mean they do exist?" Trinity glanced up at him with shark's eyes. "Do you exist?" she said wearily and collapsed into a leather chair which was conveniently right behind her. Caprice hadn't looked around before, he's been so focused on the woman, but the truck was well decorated and was way too swank to be a truck. Black leather arm chairs were comfortable situated so that a conversation may be held, there was a sleek black tv, a large a rather less sleek arsenal of guns, and a nondescript black telephone was on a modern table right next to Trinity. Which brought Caprice's gaze back to Trinity again, and then the focus was once again regained.

"Uh… I think so. Do I?" He asked, more interested in keeping her interested than getting an accurate response. She stared at him, seeming to be trying to decide something. You could see her mind working and finally it clicked.

"In the most physical sense, but not in this world. You see, everything around you is really a Matrix, a computer programmed designed to keep us humans happy while giant robotic spiders feed off your energy." Trinity gave him "the stare" again, waiting for this to sink in.

"Giant robotic spiders are feeding off me?" he repeated, a little shocked, "Cooooool…" he grinned again and thought about giant robotic spiders taking over the earth. Trinity rolled her eyes in a most un-Trinity like way. 

"I hate teenagers," she grumbled. She gave him another second to adjust to the new paradigm of reality the boy had been thrust into. "Well, I gotta go," she said, "Now that the giant spiders have taken over the earth, we have naked mud wrestling every day at 5, and I can't miss it." Caprice's eyes snapped back to her attention.

"Really?!" he cried. No screeched. Screamed, possibly, if you can do that while jumping up and down.

"No, I just said that to get your attention," Trinity replied smoothly, "Now look, now that you know the whole truth about the Matrix, will you please stop trying to discover it all? Thanks, kid," she smiled at him a little, enjoying the jaw drop she got in return, picked up the phone and vanished. 

Caprice Henrich Lickbum III woke up in bed. Granted, that's usually where he usually woke up, but he figured today would be different on account of… the woman, and the message, and the discovery. But then he realized where he was and that it had all been a dream and a great weight (an anvil of it, really) hit him. Suddenly, there was a pounding at the door. 

"Trinity…" he whispered and rushed to open it. But it wasn't the babe from last night, it was his father and he was fuming.

"How do you explain this?!" the father said, holding up the mangled wreckage of the school computer. Caprice laughed aloud and closed the door.

"I don't," he said, and went back to bed.


End file.
